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Locked For Noon: The Note That Saved a Kidnapping Victim · The Kidnapping Files

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: On the morning of September 9th, 2022, a man crouched
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: beside a basement window well on Abelard Street and noticed
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: a loose iron grate. He reached down to fix it.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Inside the gap, pressed against the concrete seam, was a
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: white envelope. Block capitals. One word. POLIS. The letters were
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: pressed so hard, the pen had nearly torn through. Whoever
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: wrote that word had been running out of time. Three
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: days earlier, a work van had pulled into the Millstone
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Diner parking lot at noon and never left. The driver
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: walked toward a building two blocks away. He did not
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: come back. His tool belt was still on the passenger seat.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: The van was locked. What happened in the 71 hours
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: and 40 minutes between that parking lot and that envelope
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: is a story about how one man stayed calm enough
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: in the dark. to engineer his own rescue. Duane Marshall
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: was 31 years old. He had been working for Ridgeline
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Climate Systems for four years, running HVAC inspections and maintenance
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: calls across Calloway Township in central Tennessee. His co-workers described
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: him as methodical. He was the technician other crews called
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: when a system behaved in ways the manual did not explain.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: He was not the kind of person who missed a
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: shift without a text. Tuesday, September 6th, 2022 was a
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: routine day on paper. Duane had a single afternoon job,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: a scheduled HVA, C-inspection at Thorngate Tax and Bookkeeping, a
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: small commercial office at 418 Abelard Street. The appointment was
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: logged noon to two in the afternoon. His supervisor had
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: confirmed it. His van was stocked. He texted his co-worker
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: Travis Sims at 11.58 in the morning. a normal message
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: about a parts order. Nothing in it suggested anything was wrong.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: At 12.02, a server named Patrice Ford at the Millstone Diner,
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: half a block from Thorngate, looked up and saw a
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Ridgeline Climate Systems van pull into her lot. She started
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: putting in what she recognized as a regular order. Duane
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: had eaten there before. He never walked through the door.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: By 4.17 that afternoon... A dishwasher noticed the van, still
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: sitting in the lot. Engine cold. Doors locked. Tool belt
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: on the passenger seat. No note. No sign of struggle.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: His phone went silent at 11.58 and never rang again.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: The first assumption in a missing person's case is almost
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: always the simplest one. A man walks away from his
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: van near a diner on a Tuesday afternoon. Maybe something personal.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: Maybe a conflict no one knew about. Detective Craig White
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: of the Calloway Township Sheriff's Office had worked missing persons
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: cases for 17 years. He had closed three cold ones.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: He knew the statistics on voluntary disappearances. He also knew
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: what a tool belt left behind. Meant for a man
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: who had been on the job since seven that morning.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: White pulled the work order within hours. One scheduled stop.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: One address. 418 Abel Street. Thorngate Tax and Bookkeeping. He
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: also found something else in the work order. A specific name.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Ridgeline Service Coordinator, Jeff Corley, confirmed it. The client at
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: Thorngate had not simply requested a technician. She had requested
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: Dwayne Marshall by name. That detail would not make sense
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: for another three days. But it was already sitting there,
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: inside a routine service record. waiting for the rest of
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: the story to catch up to it. The name request
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: was Anomaly Number One, but it was not the only one.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: When Craig White pulled Thorngate's appointment calendar, he found something
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: that did not fit a business operating on normal rhythms.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: September 6th had been blocked as all day unavailable. That
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: block had been placed 11 days earlier. Not that morning.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: Not the week before. 11 days. For an HVAC inspection
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: scheduled noon to two, a tax office does not close
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: for a furnace inspection. White also canvassed a block. Louise
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Park ran an alterations shop. Two doors north of Thorngate.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: She remembered the morning clearly. A man in a dark
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: jacket and work pants, carrying a toolbox, had been standing
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: on the sidewalk with Nancy Thorpe. Louise Park put the
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: time between 11.45 and noon. She was certain about one
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: detail in particular. Thorpe had been outside already, waiting before
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: the van was even in the lot. That image stayed
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: with White, a business owner who blocks her entire calendar,
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: requests a technician by name, and is standing on the
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: sidewalk before the technician arrives. Not greeting a service call,
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: intercepting one, White went to 418 Abelard Street. The front
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: office looked ordinary. Tax forms in a stand by the door.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: A waiting area with chairs. A desk. Nothing that flagged anything.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: But in the back corridor near the utility access, he
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: noticed the basement door. Commercial deadbolt. Bright, untarnished screws. Recently installed.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: New hardware on an old frame has a specific look.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: This had it. He noted it. He moved on. He
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: would come back to it. By September 8th, Duane had
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: been missing for two full days. His family had filed
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: the report the previous evening. White had interviewed colleagues at
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: Ridgeline Climate Systems, talked to Patrice Ford at the Millstone Diner,
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: confirmed the timeline of the van. Everything pointed toward Thorngate
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: as the last confirmed location. But White had no probable
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: cause for a warrant. He had a blocked calendar, a
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: name request. And a new deadbolt. That same afternoon, a
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: woman who worked in an office building adjacent to Thorngate
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: mentioned something in passing to a patrol officer, canvassing the area.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: She had heard what sounded like a loud argument inside
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: Thorngate the day before. One voice, she said. Not two.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: Just one man's voice, raised. Then silence. The officer lugged it.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: One voice shouting. Not an exchange. One voice. White read
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: the notation that evening. He flagged it. The detail was
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: wrong in a way that mattered, but he could not
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: yet say exactly how. Here is what was actually happening
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: inside that basement on September 8th. Dwayne Marshall had not
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: lost his composure. He had calculated. He knew Thorpe came
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: to the basement at roughly six in the evening. He
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: had watched her routine for two days. He had also
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: noticed something during those two days. The furnace alcove where
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: he had been confined was not fully sealed. The base
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: panel had a gap at the lower left corner. Behind
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: the panel, in the gap between the frame and the floor,
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: there was a child's activity kit, the kind distributed at
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: family restaurants. It contained crayons, brown ones. He also had
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: the torn lining of a grocery bag, brown paper, rough-surfaced
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: enough to hold crayon marks, on the morning of September 8th.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: Dwayne heard a client arrive at Thorngate's back office entrance.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: He heard the knock. He heard Thorpe's footsteps move toward
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: the back. He had perhaps ninety seconds, he screamed, not
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: in panic, not in desperation. He screamed, to pull Thorpe downstairs,
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: to create noise that would mask what he was about
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: to do, and occupy her attention long enough for the
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: client to wait. Knock again. Demand a response. It worked.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: Thorpe moved toward the basement door. The client stayed at
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: the back entrance. In the gap between those two sounds,
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: Dwayne wrote two sheets of notes by crayon on torn
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: brown paper, then wedged the crayon fragment under the furnace
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: base panel. The notes went into an envelope, block capitals
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: on the front. The word POLIS pressed so hard the
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: pen nearly tore through. one voice shouting, then silence. The
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: witness next door had heard exactly what Duane needed her
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: to hear. The envelope needed to get out of the basement.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: Duane had no access to the street. The basement utility
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: room had one east-facing window, ground level covered by an
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: iron grate over a narrow window. Well, the gap between
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: the grate and the concrete lip of the well was
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: not wide enough for a hand, but it was wide
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: enough for an envelope. pushed flat, he folded the envelope twice.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: He slid it through the gap into the window well
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: and pressed it into the seam where the great frame
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: met the concrete. The low street grayed, out of sight
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: from above. Then he waited. The morning of September 9th,
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: a man named David Andrews was running an errand for
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: his pastor at Calvary Fellowship. The errand took him down
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: Abelard Street at roughly 11.40 in the morning. Andrews noticed
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: a loose grate on an east-facing window, well at the
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: base of 418 Abelard. He crouched down to press it
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: back into place. His hand found the envelope first. The
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: word POLICE was written in capital letters. Pressed hard, visible
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: even in the shadow of the well. Andrews did not
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: knock on the door of Thorngate. He did not slide
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: it back under the grate. He walked two blocks to
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: where he had seen a patrol car parked and handed
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: the envelope to the officer inside. White had the note
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: by noon. Sheet 1. My name is Duane Marshala. I
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: am in the basement. DO NOT KNOCK SHEET 2 A
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: crude map of the basement layout, a symbol for the
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: lock on the door, and a single line, SHE COMES
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: AT SIX. Three words that told White exactly how much
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: time he had and exactly what kind of operation this
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: had to be. NO SIRENS NO FRONT APPROACH A WARRANT
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: EXECUTED QUIETLY FROM THE REAR BEFORE SIX IN THE EVENING
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: The warrant was signed. The entry team moved into position.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: At 2.14 in the afternoon, they opened the basement door
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: at Thorngate Tax and Bookkeeping. Dwayne Marshall was standing, dehydrated.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: A laceration on his left forearm, consistent with restraint, conscious.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: His first words, She comes at six. You've got time.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: He had held on to that information for about three days.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: He gave it to the first person who came through
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: that door as a gift. Not a cry for help.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: A tactical briefing. Nancy Thorpe was arrested at 4.30 that
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: afternoon at a gas station on Route 7, about 90
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: minutes before her own schedule said she would have returned
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: to the basement. For 11 weeks after her arrest, Nancy
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: Thorpe said nothing. No explanation. No statement. No motive entered
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: the record. Her silence was total and deliberate. The evidence
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: assembled itself without her. The blocked calendar. The name request
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: through Jeff Corley at Ridgeline. Louise Park's account of Thorpe
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: waiting on the sidewalk. The new deadbolt with its bright screws.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: The crayon fragment wedged under the furnace panel. The two
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: sheets of brown paper. The forensic match between the torn
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: bag and the grocery store packaging found in Thorngate's back office.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: Every piece pointed inward. None of it explained why. Then,
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: In December of 22, a woman named Kim Prater was
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: in the same holding facility as Nancy Thorpe on an
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: unrelated fraud charge. Prater told investigators that Thorpe had spoken
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: freely in their shared cell, in detail. Self-incriminating detail. Prater
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: provided a written account. In January of 23, Thorpe gave
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: a formal confession to Detective White and the district attorney.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: The trial came in the spring of 23. Dwayne Marshall testified.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: He was 31 years old and had spent about three
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: days in a basement writing a note with a crayon.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: He told the jury what he remembered, what he calculated,
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: what he heard, and what he did. The jury deliberated
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: for four hours. Nancy Thorpe was convicted of kidnapping and
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: aggravated assault. She was sentenced to 22 years. The question
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: of motive remained officially unresolved in public record. The why
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: never entered the trial testimony in a form the record
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: could confirm. What the record does confirm is premeditation stretched
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: across 11 days, a name selected in advance, a calendar cleared,
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: a door fortified, and a lock installed before any HVAC
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: technician was ever scheduled to arrive. Picture the basement at
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: Thorngate on September 6th, the deadbolt already in place, the
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: calendar already blocked. Thorpe already outside on the sidewalk in
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: position before the van rounded the corner. Nothing about that
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: sequence is consistent with impulse. It is consistent with a
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: person who had done this before or had thought about
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: doing it long enough that preparation had become routine. That
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: line of thinking led Craig White somewhere the trial had
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: not gone. A Harwell County detective reached out after Thorpe's conviction.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: Harwell County sits roughly 90 miles west of Calloway Township.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: In 2019, a 34-year-old man named Robert Sears had gone
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: missing for nine days. He was found at a truck stop,
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: disoriented with no memory of where he had been confined.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: No arrest was ever made. The victim profile matched. The
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: confinement method matched. The absence of forensic trail matched. A
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: joint review was opened. No second charge has been filed.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: The connection has not been confirmed to a legal standard.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: White's own words on record. The question of whether September
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: of 22 had been the first time, or only the
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: first time someone had gotten a note out. Dwayne Marshall
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: survived because he found a crayon in the dark and
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: understood that a 90-second distraction was enough. Robert Sears survived too.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: He just never found the crayon. The spring trial lasted
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: four days. Dwayne Marshall took the stand. He described the basement.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: the deadbolt, the moment he found the crayon wedged under
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: the furnace-based panel in the dark. He described screaming deliberately
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: to draw Nancy Thorpe downstairs, buying himself ninety seconds while
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: a client knocked on the back office door above him.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: The jury heard all of it. They deliberated four hours.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: Thorpe had maintained silence for eleven weeks after her arrest.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: No statement, no explanation, no acknowledgement. Then, her cellmate. Kim Prater,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: who was in on an unrelated fraud charge, reported detailed
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: self-incriminating statements Thorpe had made in December of 2022. Thorpe
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: gave a formal confession to Detective Craig White and the
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: district attorney in January of 2023. The conviction came in
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: the spring of that same year. Kidnapping. Aggravated assault. 22 years.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: The question of motive was never resolved in the public record.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: The Y did not enter trial testimony in any form
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: the record could confirm. What the record does confirm is
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: that Thorpe blocked her calendar 11 days in advance, requested
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: Dwayne Marshall by name from his employer, by name from
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: his employer, installed a commercial deadbolt before he ever arrived,
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: and was standing outside on the sidewalk in position before
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: his van rounded the corner onto Abelard Street. There is
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: no version of that sequence that looks like impulse. White's
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: work did not end with the verdict. After Thorpe's conviction,
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: a detective from Harwell County made contact. Harwell County sits
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: roughly 90 miles west of Callaway Township. In 2019, a
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: 34-year-old man named Robert Sears had gone missing for nine days.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: He was found at a truck stop. Disoriented and without
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: memory of where he had been held, no arrest was
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: ever made in that case. The victim profile, the confinement method,
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: the absence of any forensic trail, all of it matched
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: the Marshall case. A joint review was opened. As of
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: the record available, no second charge has been filed. The
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: connection between Thorpe and Sears has not been confirmed to
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: a legal standard. It may never be. Craig White put
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: his uncertainty on record in these words. The question of
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: whether September of 22 had been the first time, or
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: only the first time, someone had gotten a note out,
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: that distinction matters. It is the difference between a single,
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: contained crime and a pattern that reached back years before
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: anyone knew to look. There is a detail from the
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: morning of September 9th that does not appear in any
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: arrest record or court filing. It belongs to David Andrews,
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: the man who found the envelope in the window well
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: while fixing a loose grate on an errand for his pastor.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: He was not law enforcement. He was not investigating anything.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: He crouched down to push a metal grate back into
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: place and found a white envelope addressed in block capitals.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: Pressed so hard the pen had nearly torn through the
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: paper with one word. P. So. So. Fart. P. With
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: one word. Pie. He did not know what was inside.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: He did not know that three days earlier, in a
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: basement fifty-three steps from where he was kneeling, a man
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: had torn two sheets from a brown paper grocery bag,
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: found a fragment of a children's crayon in the dark,
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: and written the only message that could reach the surface.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: By 2.14 that afternoon, Dwayne Marshall was standing in the
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: utility room where he had been held, dehydrated, a laceration
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: on his left forearm, conscious. His first words to the
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: officers who opened that door were not relief, not confusion,
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: not a name, They were information. Precise, useful, forward-looking information.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: She comes at six. You've got time. Three days in
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: a locked basement, and his first thought was operational. The
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: detail has no clean ending in no single cause. Dwayne
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: Marshall had spent 71 hours and 40 minutes in a room.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: He could not leave with a restraint mark on his
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: arm and no certainty that anyone was looking. And when
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: the door opened, he was already thinking about what came next.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: Nancy Thorpe left no statement, no letter, and no recorded request.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: The jury did not hear a motive. 22 years is
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: the answer. The law gave to a question. It could
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: not fully articulate. What the record does give is this.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: A crayon fragment under a furnace, a man who understood
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: that 90 seconds was enough, and a word pressed into
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: an envelope so hard it nearly tore through. Duane Marshall
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: wrote that word in the dark, alone, with no guarantee
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: anyone would ever read it. Someone did. This show is
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: made by Oboe Media.